


About a Boy

by theorchardofbones



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Gen, I may pick it up again someday, Post-Blind Betrayal, Post-Endgame, This Isn't Complete, but it's bothering me seeing it in my WIPs so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-10-30 00:07:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10864956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theorchardofbones/pseuds/theorchardofbones
Summary: A disgraced paladin; a young boy; a harsh and unforgiving world.Along their path they'll face many trials, and maybe — just maybe — learn the meaning of family.





	1. Chapter 1

Danse carefully takes out all the contents of the pack, neatly lining everything up in front of him. 

Cans of food, some with labels and some — mystery meals — without. Boxes of pre-war junk food, miraculously preserved. Four bottles of water. There’s even a bottle of Nuka-Cola, still sealed.

It’s all they have left.

He looks over at the bundle of blankets across the fire from him, the mop of red hair just visible at one end. Sound asleep, without a care in the world.

Danse can certainly feel hunger — has known the long, hard days without food, without any idea of when the next meal might come in. He wonders if synths can starve to death; decides he’s not willing to find out.

With a sigh, he meticulously returns everything to the pack, pulls the drawstring at the top and buckles it shut.

They won’t last long on these rations.

* * *

‘ _Fifty?_ For a piece of fruit?’

The trader gives a shrug that says she knows her prices are inflated and doesn’t have the time to care. Her eyes flit over to the boy playing nearby, jumping from boulder to boulder by the edge of the road.

‘Worth it, ain’t it?’

He eyes up the precious cargo in her hand, vibrant and lush and — most importantly — _fresh_. They haven’t had fruit in two weeks, and even then it came out of a can.

Danse weighs the pouch of coins in his grasp. He knows they have about one-ninety, and that has to last them until he can find some work. Fruit would be nice, but fifty for a single pear?

He shakes his head.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘Maybe some other time.’

‘Your loss.’

He takes her stock of purified water and a can of pork n’ beans for less than the pear would have cost alone. She has bullets, a worthwhile investment, but she’s charging over the odds for them. He makes a note to stock up at the next town; traders on the road always seem to be a ripoff. 

‘Pleasure doing business,’ she says, as she tucks his caps away in her pocket. ‘Oh, and hey — if you’re looking for work, I hear there’s settlers out here looking for help with a problem.’

He nods his head. The advice is greatly appreciated; she didn’t have to offer it for free.

He watches her leave and wonders silently if he should have bought the fruit after all. At the very least, it would have made for a morale boost. No point in worrying about it now.

‘Shaun,’ he says, turning back to the boy and waving him over. ‘Let’s go.’

* * *

The settlers’ _problem_ turns out to be a group of ferals that have taken up at the purifier where they draw their water. One or two, they might have been able to handle alone; from what Danse can gather, there’s a mob of at least a dozen.

It’s a tough call, as it always is — it’s a risky venture for him, even with his military background, but they’re offering good money and room and board for the night.

‘We’ll watch your son for you,’ the matriarch says. ‘The boys’ll keep him in good hands while you’re gone.’

He almost corrects her out of reflex. Does it really matter if Shaun is his son or not? These settlers don’t care about his story; he’s just a gun for hire.

He leaves Shaun with a pipe pistol, a handful of bullets, and strict orders not to touch them unless he’s positive he needs to. Shaun nods in that unassuming way of his, as though this is all normal for a little kid his age.

‘I’m serious, Shaun,’ Danse says, taking the boy by the shoulders and looking him squarely in the eye. ‘I taught you how to shoot so you can defend yourself. It’s not a toy, so don’t start showing it off — that’s how accidents happen.’

Shaun nods again, dutiful. Danse heaves a sigh and lets him go, watching as he runs off in the direction of the other kids the matriarch had talked about. The backpack he wears jostles as he goes, weighted down by the gun nestled away in the bottom.

It’s not a long walk to the purifier; even without the pressing need for fresh water, Danse can see why the settlers would be concerned about having a mob of ferals so close by. He can see them as he rounds the bend of the stream, some sprawled out on the ground while others scuttle furtively about, never straying far from the collective.

It’s bright; at this angle, the sun is right in his eyes. He’ll be better off approaching from the south.

He adjusts the strap of his rifle on his shoulder and takes a wide arc around the mob, keeping them to his left. The terrain is more rugged here, unlike the well-traversed path along the stream’s edge. He has to trek over grassy knolls and carefully avoid warrens in the ground as he goes.

He gets a better look at the ferals once he’s in the south, the sun at his back. There are more of them than he had realized — some of them are huddled within the water, and he can spy one tucked away under the purifier itself. Mentally he marks the ones that will react quickest to any sort of disturbance, before scanning over the idle ones.

Another of the ferals has taken to walking, blundering over rocks and bumps in the ground. It stumbles into one of its dozing companions and wakes it up, and for a while the sounds of their snarls fill the air as they swat at each other before eventually getting distracted and wandering off in opposite directions.

He’s glad they can’t smell him; they’d be on him in an instant.

Carefully, silently, he lifts the strap of his rifle off his shoulder and hoists it up to aim through the sights. He has a good view of the ferals, at least, and it’ll probably take a while before they figure out where the shots are coming from with the landscape being so craggy between them. Maybe he’ll get lucky and a couple of them will break their ankles in burrows as he had been careful not to.

The first shot is perfect, shattering the back of the ghoul’s skull. Its corpse has barely hit the ground by the time Danse loads another round and puts it between the eyes of the feral that had squabbled with its companion moments before.

The sound of the gunfire echoes about the hills, distorting the source of the noise, and Danse sees a handful of the ferals run in one direction while a couple more take off in the other. It won’t be long before they pinpoint his location, but he uses their momentary confusion to put down two of the ferals closest to him.

That’s when it starts to go wrong.

His gun jams, long overdue for a service, and when he sets it down to pick up his 10mm instead he realizes that the group of ghouls that had taken off to the west have turned to the south, heading right for him. He considers ducking down into the long grass and snarled vines to regroup, but as he lowers himself to the ground he spots another feral coming from the east, its sights set on him as its long, emaciated limbs reach out for him.

When he fires a bullet into the thing’s face, the report of the shot seems disproportionately loud; a hiss in the distance on his left tells him he has drawn the attention of the others to him.

He’s been pinned down like this before — with his fellow soldiers, and alone — but for the first time, he feels afraid. He can’t help thinking of Shaun back at the settlement, wondering if the family there will look after him if Danse fails to return, or if they’ll turn him out into the wasteland to fend for himself.

His hand shakes as he raises his gun toward the approaching group of ferals, squeezing the trigger and—

_Click._

He flinches at the sound of the empty chamber, freezing for an instant. When his faculties come back to him he delves his hand into his pocket, feeling around for cool metal, berating himself all the while — _idiot, idiot, why didn’t you check if it was loaded first?_ — and he’s just loading the rounds into the clip, fumbling as he goes, when the closest feral lunges at him.

There were holotapes that some of the kids used to watch back at the Citadel: awful, badly filmed B-movies about the zombie apocalypse, a vision of a future that turned out to be not so far from the truth. Danse caught a snippet of one of those movies from the doorway of the dormitory, sent to tell the squires to knock it off and go to bed, and thought how _unrealistic_ it was — how ferals never overpower their victims so easily, their scrawny, malnourished limbs barely able to do little more than swing helplessly about them. 

He thinks of that movie now, of the first-person angle the director used to depict the victim being eaten alive. He feels a little like that now as the feral bowls him to the ground, a flurry of arms and elbows and gnashing, repulsive teeth.

Danse hears his gun clatter to the ground, hears the _ping_ of the bullets as they roll away into the dirt.

He manages to reach for his knife in his boot and plunge it up through the soft part of the feral’s lower jaw before it can do any damage; he’s yanking the blade out when he feels a weight fall on top of him as two more of the ghouls stumble onto him.

One of them sinks its teeth into his other hand, the fleshy part between thumb and forefinger, drawing a cry of surprise and pain from his lips. He uses the feral’s vice grip on his hand as leverage to lift its head up, driving the knife into its decaying eye socket.

The other ghoul seems less assertive, though it makes it no easier to regain control as the thing flounders around, adding more weight to the dogpile. Danse shoves fruitlessly at the press of the bodies on top of him, attempting to slip free, and when he gets enough room he stabs at the feral at the very top.

His attack does little more than slice its neck and putrid blood oozes from the wound, almost enough to make Danse gag.

He can hear the guttural sounds of the other ferals growing dangerously close; if he doesn’t get free now, he’ll be in serious trouble. He throws all of his weight to the side and — graciously — the ghoul rolls off, taken aback by the sudden movement. It tumbles through the grass, giving him enough time to shove the corpses off of him before it recovers. He uses all of his strength to sink the knife into its forehead, so deep he can’t pull it back out. 

Dropping to his knees, he finds his gun in the grass but the bullets are another story. With a muttered curse he looks about in panic, sizing up his options,when he spots something nearby in the grass: a bottle, half-filled with whiskey. It must have slipped out of his pack in the struggle.

He crouches, grabbing a fistful of the edge of his shirt and yanking until it tears. He untwists the cap on the bottle with one hand, stuffing the material in with the other. He finds his lighter safely in his breast pocket and flips it open, setting the rag alight.

The ferals are almost on him — he has no time to think, to take stock and aim before hurling the bottle at them. There’s a sound of shattering glass and a _whoomp_ as the fire ignites the alcohol, raining flame on the ghouls.

The inferno is too close for Danse’s liking; he can feel the heat of it even as he backs away, finding his discarded rifle and tugging at the bolt until it finally jerks free.

Any plans to put the rifle to use prove unnecessary. Danse watches the ghouls flail uselessly, the flames spreading as their companions collide with them. By the end of it the whole mob is ablaze, a morbid tableau of silhouettes dancing in the fire.

He waits long after the bodies have stopped twitching, until the blaze dies down; makes sure it doesn’t spread. The purifier is untouched.

Belatedly, he realizes his hand is bleeding. He’ll have to get it looked at; that’ll set him back another handful of caps. He sighs and puts his back to the carnage, wondering if it was worth it in the end.

The settlers can clean up the bodies. He’s done his part.


	2. Chapter 2

Danse is told to clean up before they’ll let him into the house. The word ‘ungrateful’ springs to mind.

The eldest daughter brings him a pail of water and a rag for a towel, and shows him to the tumbledown shack at the rear of the settlement; he feels the irritation melt away when he dips a fingertip into the water and finds it lukewarm. With a bar of brahmin-fat soap dug out from the bottom of his pack, he quickly bathes before taking a look at his hand.

The feral bit deep, leaving a near-perfect imprint of its rotten, broken teeth in his skin. Already the flesh is inflamed around it, so his first worry will be infection. For now, the best he can do is keep it clean. He’ll ask the matriarch if he can borrow some salt to properly wash out the wound.

On the walk back to the homestead, empty pail in hand, he finds Shaun playing tic-tac-toe in the dirt with one of the other boys. They sit under a barren tree, the sun weaving gold through their hair.

The matriarch is up ahead, standing on the porch out front with her hands on her hips.

‘Francis,’ she calls. From her exasperated tone, Danse gathers she has to wrangle up her children often. ‘You get in here, boy. And make sure you wash those hands.’

The child unfolds his long legs out from under him and runs to the house, all but speeding past his mother. Shaun is still sitting where the boy left him, and he stays there until Danse steps up beside him.

‘C’mon,’ he says. ‘You wash up, too.’

Danse takes his time approaching the house, waiting until the flash of Shaun’s bright red hair disappears through the door. The matriarch still waits on the porch, watching him shrewdly. She wears an apron tied around her waist, stained in places; a wisp of hair has come free from her prim bun and dangles down her neck, sticking to her skin with the humidity in the air.

‘Don’t talk much, do he?’ she says.

Danse doesn’t need to ask: she’s talking about Shaun.

He shakes his head.

‘He’s… been through a lot,’ he says.

She clucks her tongue against the roof of her mouth; he watches her hands fold in front of her, her fingers wringing together uncomfortably. He wonders if he makes her uneasy, takes a step back just in case.

‘Best we can offer you is the shack for the night,’ she says. ‘We got no blankets, but there’s oil lamps as you can use for warmth.’

Danse looks up at the sky, already a dim purple now that the sun is threatening to set. It’s been a warm day, unseasonably so for May; he can’t imagine it getting too cold in the night.

‘That’s very generous.’

She gestures for him to go ahead and he obliges. Once inside, she tells him to set his things down by the front door before taking a seat at the table.

The house is small: two stories, but no less of a tight squeeze. The main room serves as kitchen and parlor alike, and a set of spindly stairs in the corner must lead up to what Danse imagines is a very modest set of bedrooms.

It’s a wonder they all fit — he has counted six children in all — but then he spies the bedding beside the stove and in a little nook in the corner.

When he takes a seat on a rickety stool that is too low and too narrow to provide much support, he notices for the first time that there is an extra chair set out at the head of the table, with an empty place setting. He doesn’t ask.

The matriarch clasps her hands together and ducks her head once everyone is seated; soon her children follow suit. Shaun looks uncertainly up at him, as though he might somehow have an answer to what’s happening. With a little shake of his head, Danse motions with his hand and tries his best to mimic the motions of the others.

‘Oh Lord,’ the matriarch says. ‘We thank you for this bountiful meal and for the health to enjoy it, and for good company old and new. Amen.’

A murmured _Amen_ goes around the table; the echo of their voices has barely died before they each open their eyes and unclasp their hands, eager fingers taking up their knives and forks.

They eat mostly in silence, with some polite conversation exchanged from time to time. Danse learns that there are two more children not present, grown up and off working elsewhere. He tries to question the empty chair at the table but the matriarch grows quiet and he never gets an answer.

‘Thank you for the wonderful meal, ma’am,’ he says, after.

There was little enough food to go around but what there was filled his belly well enough, and he hasn’t seen Shaun this full in weeks. He wonders how easy it was for the family to spare; how dearly they’ll pay for their generosity in the coming days.

‘It was well-earned,’ she says. ‘You done us a great service. And please — it's Maura.’

True to her promise, there's a lamp for them when they move to turn in for the night. It's freshly lit, but already the glass is warm to the touch. 

The night is muggy and close; the shack proves too warm in the heat even with the lamp doused so they move outside, laying their bedrolls out under the stars. They’re both fitful and Danse tosses and turns, sweat welling in the small of his back and under his arms.

He thinks he finally sleeps, only to be startled awake by Shaun’s voice saying his name timidly. He rolls over to face the boy and finds him toying with a few blades of grass, twisting them together into a knot.

‘Is something the matter?’

Shaun shakes his head. He’s staring intently down at the grass in his hands, failing to meet Danse’s eye. He gets like this sometimes — consumed with his task. When Danse moves to roll back over, Shaun speaks up again.

‘What were they doing at dinner?’ he asks, his voice childish and inquisitive.

Danse lies on his back and rests his hands together on his stomach. He watches the stars overhead for a moment, faint wisps of cloud passing slowly by, while he thinks of his response.

‘They were praying,’ he says.

‘Praying?’

Danse sighs. There are still so many things Shaun doesn’t know about the world up here — things that it invariably falls to him to teach. He hadn’t thought about having children before everything, at least not seriously, and yet here he is.

‘It’s… Some people believe there’s something out there, bigger than all of us, who watches over us. When they pray, it’s like they’re speaking to that something.’

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Shaun’s head perk up, his attention no longer divided.

‘Like aliens?’ he says, his eyes wide.

So the Institute taught him about aliens, but not religion — a fundamental part of the lives of many of the humans on the surface that they were claiming to look out for. Danse feels an irrational pang of annoyance.

‘Not exactly,’ Danse says. ‘Remember Father? How he was a leader to all of you? It’s a little like that, but they live somewhere past the stars. Some believe in a place called Heaven out there, where there’s someone like Father who watches over all of us. They believe that if you’re kind during your life, you’ll go Heaven too when you die.’

He’s making a butchery of it and he’s fully aware; it’s a cobbled-together, bastardized version of the religion that Cutler once told him about, the faith that his family had raised him to follow.

The response seems to satisfy Shaun’s curiosity for the time being; he resumes playing with the strands of grass with his fingers, falling into silence.

Danse wriggles around on his bedroll awhile, trying to get comfortable again. The conversation has woken him up too much and his thoughts keep flashing back to Cutler, to the times they had lain awake like this, talking late into the night.

‘Danse?’

He glances up. Shaun watches him with those bright, questioning eyes.

‘You know Heaven?’ the boy says. ‘Is that where synths go when they die?’

Danse lifts his eyes to the sky once more. The stars are no longer a comfort, twinkling little lights in a blanket of navy; instead he feels the vastness of it all spinning out above him and he has to shut his eyes, blocking it out.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I don’t know.’


	3. Chapter 3

He opens his eyes to the barrel of a gun.

The room is cold — concrete walls and fluorescent lights casting everything in a sickly glow. He’s on his knees. The hand holding the gun doesn’t tremble, doesn’t waver.

‘I’m sorry, Danse,’ a voice says, and he remembers who it belongs to; remembers the red hair, the spray of freckles across the cheeks. He remembers her, and he remembers this moment, and he remembers the sick feeling in his gut when he realized this was the end.

But — that’s not right. He’s been through this, lived this day before.

‘This is a dream,’ he says.

There’s a laugh, hollow and cruel. The gun lowers and he sees the woman behind it, high cheekbones and big blue eyes.

‘But Danse,’ she says. ‘Machines can’t dream.’

* * *

The nightmare still echoes in his head long after he wakes.

He tries to rinse the bitter taste from the back of his throat with a mouthful of water, warm from sitting in a bucket in the heat. He spits on the ground and wipes his mouth, nausea momentarily giving him pause. When he lifts his head, Maura stands nearby with her hands in the pocket of her apron, her eyes squinting against the sun.

‘You got someplace to be today?’ she asks.

She leads him around the house, out past the fields of tatos and carrots. There’s a little wooden structure there, poorly thrown together; balding, pink fowl wander around outside it, pecking at the dirt. There are deep holes in the ground, and the fence around the enclosure is damaged, haphazardly mended with a large square of cotton.

‘Molerats,’ she explains. ‘Crafty little beggars tore the place up. Made off with one of our hens before I got to ‘em with the shotgun.’

Danse folds his arm across his chest and surveys the damage. The burrows are an eyesore, dirt thrown out in a heap alongside them. It’s a wonder the hens — if that’s what the ugly little birds are — haven’t fallen in yet.

‘Be another meal in it for you if you help put things right,’ Maura says.

* * *

He and one of Maura’s sons, Conor, spend the morning turning the earth in the enclosure while the hens squawk and squabble around them. It’s thirsty work, even in the relative coolness of the morning before the sun hits its peak; the eldest daughter brings them water and sandwiches made of coarse, gritty bread to give them a break.

She lingers, doing a poor job of hiding her curiosity as she watches Danse from beneath her choppy blonde bangs.

‘You ever think about moving to a city, like your brother and sister?’ he asks, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his arm.

Conor shakes his head.

‘It’s an honest living out here,’ he says. ‘You had a notion to leave though — didn’t you, Molly?’

When Danse looks up at the girl, she’s blushing from the sudden attention. She fidgets with the hem of her skirt where she leans against the fence behind her, her eyes trained down at her shoes.

‘Trader came through before,’ she mumbles, her voice almost lost where she tucks her chin into her chest. ‘Said there’s a place in the Jewel where there’s women scientists.’

Danse mulls her words over as he chews and swallows a mouthful of bread. She’s probably talking about the science center in Diamond City — he ventured in only once, having taken a wrong turn in the warren-like streets. 

‘Are you interested in science?’ he asks. ‘I’m sure they’d be willing to teach you, in return for help with their research.’

‘Isn’t it time you get back to Ma?’ Conor says, with a pointed look at his sister. ‘No time for dawdling with chores to be done.’

Molly stammers out an apology and quickly takes their empty plates and glasses, scurrying away without another word.

They resume their work, but Danse can’t help feeling Conor’s eyes on the back of his neck.

* * *

Maura has another job for him the next morning. There’s a hole in the roof, so the shingles will have to be replaced; it looks like there’ll be blue skies for days yet, so now’s the time.

He’s glad for the square meals and the promise of a place to sleep by the lights of civilization, but sticking in one place for so long makes him bristle. Shaun seems to have benefited from being around kids his own age, at least; the previous night, he had to recount all the mischief he got up to during the day before Danse could settle him down enough to sleep.

With every step, they’ve put the Commonwealth — and the Brotherhood — a little farther behind them, but they’re still closer than he would like. He doesn’t even know if anywhere is far enough; doesn’t know if he’ll ever stop running.

He has to vault onto the top of the porch and climb from there onto the roof. Maura hovers around at ground level, craning her neck to look at him and shielding her eyes from the sun.

‘How’s it look?’

He stoops as he moves about on the roof, dislodging a couple of loose pieces of shingle as he goes. The whole thing looks like it could do with being replaced — he wonders just how long it’s been since anybody came up here — but he expects it will hold for the time being.

‘I see it,’ he says, popping his head over the edge of the roof. ‘Doesn’t look so bad. Should get it done by noon.’

He’s used to working in solitude, and she seems content to silently watch, from time to time placing things on top of the porch for him to use. There are no spare shingles, but there are pieces of wood, tin and coarse brahmin leather to make up the difference.

The heat is unbearable as the day wears on. He sheds his shirt, down to the tank underneath, and when that becomes drenched in sweat he strips out of that too. After that, Maura makes a point of keeping her eyes on his when they have the need to interact.

It’s not a pretty job, but he’s happy enough by the end of it that it’ll hold. He winds up mending another couple of places where it looks like the shingles have rotted through, and by the time he gets back to the ground he feels lightheaded from the sun. Maura already has a big glass of water waiting for him, pressing it into his hands, and he drains it in a few greedy gulps.

She waits until he’s finished and takes the glass from him. The water helped, but he still feels dizzy — the relentless heat, the monotonous songs of the insects. She comes close to him and lays a hand on his upper arm, concern breaking through her usual reticence.

‘You’re gone bright red,’ she says. ‘Let’s get you into some shade.’

She leaves him sitting on the beat-up old bench on the porch and disappears for a while, returning with a fresh glass of water.

‘Sip it this time,’ she says, sternly. ‘You ain’t careful, gonna make yourself sick.’

Danse does as instructed, but even the first sip proves a little too much. He carefully sets the water aside and cradles his head in his hands, taking slow, deep breaths.

‘You need a doctor?’ she asks.

He can feel her, hovering over him like he’s a brahmin in a difficult labor. He feels weak, and pathetic — he used to be one of the Brotherhood’s most valued officers and he’s trembling and swooning from a little heat stroke. When he shakes his head and moves to stand, her hand is at his shoulder, calloused and strong, pushing him back down into his seat.

‘Give yourself some time,’ she says. ‘People die in heat like this.’

He sits and she waits with him, and from time to time prompts him to take little drinks of his water. He watches Shaun and two of the boys out in the tall grass in the yard, messing with something on the ground. When Shaun stands up, he has a tiny reptile in his hands.

‘You overdid it is all,’ Maura says. ‘Be right again soon enough.’

She rests her hip against the edge of the bench, smoothing down her apron. She’s watching the boys too, with a distant look in her eyes like she’s there and not there all at once.

Clouds pass over the sun and the warm summer breeze takes on a cold edge, bringing goosebumps to Danse’s skin.

‘I should be fine now,’ he says.

This time, when he moves to stand, she doesn’t stop him.

* * *

Shaun is exuberant at dinner and the effects are contagious; the kids are all rowdy, talking across one another, and even the older siblings can’t seem to help joining in.

‘What’re you gonna call your lizard?’ Francis asks, prodding Shaun in the arm.

Danse raises an eyebrow and looks over at Shaun. His cheeks and the tip of his nose are cherry red with sunburn, and already he can see the freckles coming out in full force.

‘Your _lizard_?’ Danse echoes, thinking back to the writhing little creature he had seen in the boy’s hands.

It’s hard to tell if Shaun is blushing, or if it’s the burn. He refuses to meet Danse’s eye.

‘I wasn’t gonna keep ‘em,’ he says meekly. ‘He’s got a broken leg or something. I wanted to help him get better.’

Danse sighs, but it’s lighthearted. There are far worse sorts of trouble that boys Shaun’s age could be getting up to.

When he meets Maura’s eye across the table, she’s smiling.

* * *

He helps her clear up the table after dinner. He washes the dishes and hands them to her to dry with a towel, delicately embroidered with images of hubflowers. He can hear the kids outside, excitedly chattering about the lizard.

‘He came right outta his shell,’ Maura says, stretching up to place a freshly-dried dish onto its shelf. ‘Never would’ve realized there was such a lively little boy squirreled away in there.’

Danse doesn’t say that it’s a change from the long days of silences, the sightless staring. Shaun had lost the only home he had ever known, only to be abandoned by the one he was programmed to call ‘mother’; he can’t say he ever blamed the boy for how he responded to it all.

‘It’s good to see,’ he says.

He rinses the soap from his hands and takes the proffered towel from Maura to dry off. She takes his hand, holding it there for a moment until he drags his glance up to meet hers.

‘Not worrying about him for a little while done you some good,’ she says. ‘That’s good to see, too.’

The last time he was this close to someone, it had been Haylen; she had pressed a pouch full of caps into his hands and made him promise he would keep in touch. When she had left, it had been like cutting a part of himself out from his chest.

There’s something lodged in his throat, something stinging at his eyes. Maura’s hands are rough and calloused from years of work, but they’re warm, and there’s a softness to them too — a softness to the curve of her cheek, to the petal pink of her lips.

The corners of her eyes are crinkled in a smile, but there’s a somberness there too, a hint of apprehension.

Maura lets his hand go.

‘Oughta check on the boys,’ she says, with a glance towards the door.

Danse sets the cloth aside carefully on the counter. He moves, angling himself between Maura and the door. He can still hear the kids outside — they’re arguing good-naturedly about what to call the lizard.

‘They’re fine,’ Danse says.

She looks up at him, her eyes an imperfect hazel that he never took notice of before. Her cheeks are burned from the sun, much like the children’s, but the color brings a liveliness to her face.

He reaches for one of her hands, where they worry at the edge of her apron. She lets him thread his fingers through hers, and when his other hand moves to her hip she’s all too happy to be gently pulled close.

‘They are,’ Maura agrees.

She presses her hand to his chest, the warmth of her leaching through the flannel of his shirt, and looks up at him under long, pale lashes. She’s beautiful in her own way, bathed in the sun cast in through the door as motes of dust swirl around her — but it’s the smile that transforms her, the shy way she stretches up on tiptoes and seeks out his mouth with her own.

There’s a clattering sound behind him; Danse pulls away and pivots on his feet toward the source of the interruption and finds Shaun and the others running through the house and back out again. The boy’s got the lizard in his hands, clutched above his head while his newfound friends chase him.

‘Boys!’ Maura shouts.

Danse hears a quiver in her voice. When he turns back to her she’s methodically smoothing down her apron with one hand while the other finds her lips, blotting at some unseen mark. She’s gone a moment later, marching after the children to wrangle them up.


End file.
